Ron Paul throws in the towel and Rand endorses Mitt: Is the revolution over?

Texas Congressman — and three time Presidential loser — Ron Paul admitted the obvious this week.

He won’t win the GOP Presidential nomination. He won’t even come close.

In an email to supporters late Wednesday, also received at the offices of Capitol Hill Blue, Paul said:

When it is all said and done, we will likely have as many as 500 supporters as delegates on the Convention floor. That is just over 20 percent! And while this total is not enough to win the nomination, it puts us in a tremendous position to grow our movement and shape the future of the GOP!

Then Paul’s son threw the final spade of dirt on his father’s political grave Thursday by endorsing Mitt Romney for President and vowing to campaign actively for the presumptive GOP nominee.

The elder Paul’s claim to have “as many as 500 supporters at delegates on the Convention floor” is optimistic at best. The Republican National Committee’s current delegate count — following this week’s primaries — gives Romney 1,480 delegates and Paul 137 with 261 delegates remaining. Even if Paul won all the remaining delegates — which is not only unlikely but impossible — he would go into the convention with 398 delegates.

He might pick up a handful of the delegates still bound to former candidates Rick Santorum (267) or New Gingrich (138) but since both have endorsed Romney, most of their supporters will feel an obligation to follow their candidate’s lead.

And before the Paul faithful starts posting the usual autobot flow of links to sites that claim different delegate counts, they should remember that political conventions are anything but democratic and the only delegate count that matters is the one controlled by the RNC — the folks who run the convention.

Ron Paul’s email and Rand Paul‘s endorsement of Romney has left many of the elder Paul’s die-hard flock of enthusiastic — if not realistic — supporters feeling like a Christian Scientist with appendicitis.

The Liberty movement is big and sprawling, and the only thing holding this faction together is Ron Paul. And now we are seeing it start to blow apart. People are canceling their subscriptions in droves. Traffic on the site peaked back in January. Ron Paul is retiring from Congress next year.

“I’m not much interested in leading the masses into the Republican Party,” Nystrom adds. “This site will not become the Daily Rand.”

With Paul effectively throwing in the towel, albeit long after the other fighters left the ring, what happens to the movement he spawned?

Will it continue? Or will it simply become another failed, flash-in-the-pan populist movement destined for the trashcan of hopeless lost political causes?

Nobody with a firmly-planted sense of political reality ever expected Ron Paul to be the GOP Presidential nominee. The last antiwar candidate to capture the top spot on a Republican or Democrat presidential ticket was George McGovern.

While some can argue — and some also see a legitimate need — for a political “revolution,” the sad truth is the American political system has no place for insurgents and the rules of the game favor the establishment.

In an ideal world, it shouldn’t be that way.

Politics, however, is far from ideal. In the real world, Ron Paul never stood a chance and with his son now supporting the GOP establishment the flame in the torch that the father hoped to one day pass on to his son may have gone out.

Being a Ron Paul supporter means a respect for a balanced budget and an interest in individual freedoms. In both cases, it was Ross Perot who had the answers to our out of control spending. The only way Perot could run against the Democratic and Republican National Committees was to run on his own “Reform” Party. He lost because trying to open a new political agenda was asking too much of the voters.

Trying to open a political dialog in public is the fastest way to break up a gathering. People will stand up and start to move away stating “we do not talk politics” and I often reply “that is why we are in a continual state of war.” Unless one is a reader of newspapers and/or a reader of internet sites, they are not informed enough to make a statement about any candidate.

Ron Paul decided to stay under the agenda of the GOP and it lost him many votes. It is the agenda of the Republicans that has destroyed the purpose of not voting for a Democrat.

There is too much comparison between the new GOP agenda and the same agenda of the Right Wing Nazi Party. The GOP has a serious worship of a Christian God and the Nazi had a serious worship of a Dictator Adolph Hitler.

Individual freedoms are redundant in both cases and it often sounds as if Orwell has replaced Karl Rove in the development of the federal government.

Ron Paul and Ross Perot gave their elections the best that they could offer but the voters were not receptive to having to learn a new way to look at government. Ron Paul returned to the GOP and lost his base. At this time, there is no candidate of either of the two party system that would bring my support. Garry Johnson is the closest thing for my vote, that is until he loses it.

Even in our response to losing Ron Paul, it cannot be done using intelligent reasons. It is more fun to issue “obnoxious Paulbots” as this is the new language in politics. This is called “tres chic” and I call it horse pucky.

Let’s look at the records of the past five presidents and decide where the out-of-control has been.

Starting with Ronald Reagan, spending by government began to expand to today’s deficit-and-debt “problem”.

Reagan inherited a spending budget from Jimmy Carter of $678.241 billion. He steadily increased the budget until he left office spending $1.143 trillion. That is a 68.8% increase in spending in eight years, or about 8.6% annual increase. At the end of Reagan’s presidency his tax collections amounted to $991.105 billion, up from the $617.766 in Carter’s last year. That is a 60% growth in tax receipts; the difference between growth in spending and growth in tax receipts being the beginning of the nation’s spiral into massive debt.

George H. W. Bush took Reagan’s spending up from $1.143 trillion to $1.461 trillion, a 27.8% increase in four years; or about a 7% annual increase. His tax collections rose from the $991.105 billion in Reagan’s last year to $1.154 trillion in Bush’s last year, a 16.5% increase that’s well below the increase in spending.

Bill Clinton, on the other hand, had just the reverse of the Republican record. His spending rose to $1.863 trillion (27.5% over eight years, or 3.4% yearly) while tax receipts grew from Bush’s $1.154 trillion to $1.991 trillion, a whopping 72.5% increase. But Clinton was constantly harangued by the GOP for his “out-of-control spending” as every Republican in Congress voted against the budgets that produced positive results.

Of the four presidents who preceded Obama, George W. Bush had the most-miserable record. He almost doubled Clinton’s spending, going from the $1.863 trillion he inherited to $3.518 trillion in his last budget (for the 2009 fiscal year that started October 1, 2008, not calendar year), an increase of 88.8%; or 11.1% per year over his eight years in office. But the tax receipts of $1.991 trillion of Clinton’s last year came to only $2.105 in Bush’s last year, a mere 5.7% better than what he inherited. There was one year in Bush’s midterm that tax receipts were slightly higher, but only with a 22% increase; still not enough to justify his reckless-and-irresponsible economic stewardship.

Then came Obama and GOP charges that his economic performance has put the nation in peril. The facts show that in Obama’s first budget that was entirely his own, spending actually was reduced from Bush’s $3.518 trillion to $3.456 trillion. Over the first two years, spending rose slightly because of Obama’s second budget. But the spending total of $3.603 trillion was only a 2.5% increase over Bush’s last budget. That 1.25% increase per annum is no problem when compared to Bush’s 11.1% yearly increase. With the second budget, Obama’s spending was about $85 billion above Bush’ s spending while tax collection increased about $200 billion. It’s clear that Obama has restored fiscal sanity to government; for that he is maligned and ridiculed.

These figures–that show the debt right wingers rail against to be an entirely Republican creation–are not mysterious; they are easy to find for anyone willing to look and can be found at the Office of Management and Budget. Why they remain unknown to the news media and a wanna-be president (who promises to resurrect the policies of Reagan and both Bushes) is the real mystery.

As anyone can see; the GOP is bad for the economy and business, always has been, always will be. Democrats ought to emphasize to the American public that every Republican administration since World War One has trashed the economy -–some several times–or made a GOP recession worse (Gerald Ford) and Democrats ought not be afraid to say so. And every tax cut for the American aristocracy by the GOP has preceded a recession or depression. In fact every American—especially those in control and most assuredly those in Congress—ought to get and digest the book “Saving America: Using Democratic Capitalism to Rescue the Nation from Economic Folly” (written by a former Denver Post editor for Algora Publishing of New York City) that shows the legacy of the Republican Party as opposed to the Democratic Party. A hint: Republicans come in second in every economic category worth researching (Chapter 11). It also proposes a plan to save the nation with real reform rather than nibbling around the edges of a corrupt system.

It is evident that the records of “failure” belong only to Republicans and the Obama agenda has been to restore sanity to government budgets.

We also live in a capitalist society, and in capitalism spending is the lifeblood of the system. It needs to be enhanced, not reduced.

Not kidding. Facts and reality don’t kid. Quadruple increase in spending was done by the three previous right-wing Republican things as the facts clearly show. Spending since 2010 (Obama’s first budge entirely his) has not kept pace with population growth and inflation.

This article is factually incorrect. Ron Paul admitted to having close to 200 delegates at the convention. The 500 number comes from delegates that would vote for Paul if they could, but they are bound to vote for Romney due to Romney winning the particular primary vote in that state. For example, over half the Massachusetts delegates would vote for Paul (if there were a second vote). But there will not be because Romney is too far ahead now. In any case, I think he’s factually correct that there will be around 500 Paul supporters that are delegates at the convention. Something mainstream media can not comprehend.

The 500 delegate figure includes delegates that are technically allotted for Romney or Santorum, but who are actually Paul supporters. Consider Mass., where Romney won the primary, and yet Paul supporters make up a majority of the delegates from that state.

The Republican party is moving toward a split. The Ron Paul R3VOLution is the historic reason for the beginning of the new liberty party. It will take a couple more electoral cycles but we will have a liberty administration in the 2020’s.

We all knew the day would come, but I did hold out hope that the day wouldn’t arrive until convention time. Had he waited, his supporters might have had a chance at influencing VP or platform. Now, it’s as if the Paul campaign had never happened, if prior conventions are remembered.

The money facts above are about right (thanks tabonsell), except for failing to mention the Trillion$ given to non-US banks to save the world by raining dollars and destroying the value of the currency. If not allowed a veto, I am certain the Fed informed the President then in power of the “loans” and “gifts” the taxpayers gave the world banking cartels.

Clinton also has to take credit for NAFTA, but CAFTA and GATT really sealed the deal and the resulting destruction of manufacturing jobs.

The role played by Democrats, in addition to cleaning up what they can when following the spending sprees that are Republican administrations, indicates that neither party can be trusted to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution or the economy.

We need a legitimate third party, fraud free election counting, and a return to real government, preferably of the pre-Wilson style, with women still having the vote.

I am sorry but you say “in the real world, he never stood a chance”. Dr. Paul was the only intelligent candidate available. I suppose what I thought all along was true, “the real world is made up of idiots.”
I have yet to meet a single person that would vote for anyone but Dr. Paul. I think the media and our government has decided the winner for us a long time ago. The idiots in our country must need policing because they cannot think for themselves or value their freedom. Oh wait, what freedom? We lose more every year. Ranting stopped.

Things are going to be interesting in Tampa. Lawyers for Ron Paul are filing a civil rights suit regarding voter fraud and election fraud, not to mention the personal injury and false arrests of Paul supporters. They are representing any and all delegates to help insure this will not happen again. They will represent free of charge. There is a sign up sheet on Facebook as well as other sites. Again, this is for any delegate, regardless of who they support.